ANTONIA CAMPI

It was Gaetano Ballardini, director of the Museo delle Ceramiche since its beginning, with his incessant search for new work and young talent, who requested her work in 1948 to put it among the work of the best artists and most famous European manufacturers who had already sent their products to the new centre in Faenza, just recovered from the war.

Angelo Biancini, a long time collaborator with the Società Ceramica Italiana in Laveno, introduced Antonia to the Faenza Museum and so she began to take part in the then national ceramic competitions in Faenza: initially in 1949 when she won second prize with the famous Fruttiera, in 1952, 1953 and 1958 she was critically acclaimed. Ballardini said in his notes - ceramics “inspired by a sense of research and by a really unique tectonic and colour sensitivity”, interpreting elements and tastes of the artist that would be progressively honed by her inventive vein readily supported by unparalleled technical execution. Since then the artist has won many prizes, but also the design which matches expression and technology, form and practicality, without giving up her soul as a sculptor, careful since the years of her training to the elaboration of Martini’s theories, then to the research of Viani, Moore, Ernst and Tanguy, not to mention the proximity to Lucio Fontana. The large panel made for the grand staircase at the 9th Triennial Exhibition in Milan in 1951 reappears on this occasion, made from earthenware, it was originally placed under Fontana’s spacious, luminous ceiling. Many series of vases are on display, the surprisingly ironic “gallinacei” (hen) services, surreal objects but also industrial works – prestigious sanitary ware – which accompany our every day lives, imaginative, vegetable-like, almost organic, appreciably friends of the body.

About the Duchampian puzzle Antonia Campi plays her artistic bipolarism – the design of industrial installations, begun in the fifties and present in Faenza in original examples.Do not be deceived by her age: Campi is still a vibrant person, in large and small dimensions (how could we forget the refined micro-porcelain objects as fragile as egg shells?), with an experience behind her that is still coloured essential and at the same time multifaceted, still working for the SCI, Richard Ginori, Pozzi Ginori (supporter of this company) and others.

The exhibition, whose curator is Anty Pansera with Mariateresa Chirico and the artist herself, has enjoyed the kindness and willingness of private collectors, of the International Ceramic Design Museum Civica Raccolta di Terraglia of Cerro of Laveno, and of the Pozzi-Ginori collection.